The presumptive appointment by President-elect Barack Obama of retired
Admiral Dennis C. Blair as his new Director of National Intelligence is being
greeted with cheers by the national media, which hail his experience,
bureaucratic infighting skills and comparatively moderate views on national
security issues. The New York Times, in a recent profile, seemed much impressed
by the fact that the 34-year Navy veteran once water skied behind an aircraft
carrier, in addition to his stints with the National Security Council, the
Central Intelligence Agency and the Institute for Defense Analysis (from which
he resigned in 2006 over conflict of interest charges involving the F-22
raptor).

But human rights supporters are right to be worried that Dennis Blair will
hardly lead the charge for reform in the nation’s intelligence community after
the Bush Administration’s embrace of torture, rendition and other crimes. For
in the period leading up to and following East Timor’s August 1999 referendum
on independence from Indonesia Blair, from his perch as US Commander in Chief of
the Pacific (CINCPAC) from February 1999 to May 2000, ran interference for the
Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) as they and their militia proxies committed crimes
against humanity on an awesome scale.

Following the ouster of long-time dictator Suharto in 1998, Indonesian
president B.J. Habibie signaled that Indonesia would be willing to allow East
Timor an up or down referendum on independence following 24 years of brutal
Indonesian occupation. The Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI), hoping to sway the
vote in Jakarta’s favor, launched a campaign of terror and intimidation led by
the Army, Police and local militia proxies in which they killed hundreds of
people displaced tens of thousands, most infamously on April 6, 1999, when
militia forces massacred 57 Timorese in a church at Liquica on the outskirts of
the capitol Dili.

Two days after the massacre, the Pentagon dispatched Blair two days later to
meet with Wiranto and demand that he disband the militias and allow a fair vote
in East Timor. Instead, Blair offered assurances of continued US support for the
TNI and invited Wiranto to Pacific Command Headquarters in Hawaii as his
personal guest. According to top secret CIA intelligence summary issued after
the massacre, however (and recently declassified by the author through a Freedom
of Information Act request), “Indonesian military had colluded with
pro-Jakarta militia forces in events preceding the attack and were present in
some numbers at the time of the killings.” A Top Secret Senior Executive
Intelligence Brief from April 20, 1999 stated plainly that “to restore
stability, the Indonesian security forces must stop supporting the militias and
adopt a neutral posture.” A Top Secret CIA Intelligence Report dated May 10,
1999 reported that “local commanders would have required at least tacit
approval from headquarters in Jakarta to allow the militias the blatant free
hand they have enjoyed.” Blair’s performance, which prompted a rebuke by the
State Department, was part of a fierce bureaucratic struggle between the
Pentagon and State Department and Embassy officers seeking to reign in the TNI’s
terror.

Immediately after the August 30, 1999 referendum, in which nearly 80 per cent
of Timorese voted for independence from Indonesia, TNI forces and their militia
proxies launched a murderous scorched earth campaign, killing nearly 1,500
Timorese, forcing a third of the population from their homes and destroying most
of the territory’s infrastructure. Following a global outcry and enormous
pressure from Congress and grassroots activists, President Clinton finally
severed military ties on September 8, with Dennis Blair personally conveying
news of the cutoff to General Wiranto.

By this point the TNI’s ­ and by extension Wiranto’s - control of the
terror operations in East Timor was being widely acknowledged internally by both
State Department and CIA sources. On September 10 the US Embassy in Canberra,
Australia dispatched a secret telegram to Washington reporting in the subject
line that that the TNI was “controlling and assisting militia” in East
Timor. Yet in Pentagon news briefing two weeks later Blair continued publicly to
push the ‘bad apple’ line ­ characterizing the TNI’s deliberate
destruction of East Timor and murder of hundreds of people as “a bad breakdown
of order with some elements of TNI contributing to it and not helping it.” He
went on to insist that US training of the Indonesian Armed Forces had paid
dividends, with “many of those officers who did have training and education in
the United States … are leading a very strong reform movement within TNI.”
As Dana Priest of the /Washington Post/ later reported, however, fully one third
of the Indonesian officers indicted by Indonesia’s national human rights
commission for “crimes against humanity” committed in East Timor in 1999
were US trained. Wiranto, also indicted, is now considering a run at the
Indonesian presidency in 2009. The clear links between US training and TNI
terror clearly did not trouble Blair, who spent much of his remaining time as
CINCPAC fighting to restore the military ties to his allies in Jakarta that
grassroots activists and their Congressional allies had worked since 1992 to
sever, finally winning their resumption in 2002.

Blair’s apologetics for murder and torture by the Indonesian armed forces
in East Timor, and his opposition to trials, international or otherwise, for the
high level perpetrators of mass violence, offers a sobering indication of the
positions he is likely to take as Director of National Intelligence.
President-elect Obama’s choice suggests that he will resist - as Blair almost
certainly will - demands for the prosecution of high-ranking Bush Administration
officials, much less lower level employees in the Pentagon and Central
Intelligence Agency, for torture, rendition and other crimes carried out in the
name of the so-called War on Terror.

Bradley Simpson is an assistant professor of history and international
affairs at Princeton and Director of the Indonesia and East Timor Documentation
Project. He has just published Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development
and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968. He can be reached at bsimpson@princeton.edu